Rising to Lead in Challenging Times

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to Career Cast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career today, we're delighted to be speaking with Anita Mendiratta. I have to say straight out, Anita, and it's not just because you have a wonderful first name: You are really an amazing professional, an amazing human being, and we're going to have a great conversation today.

Anita Mendiratta: Thank you so much for having me. And yes, I absolutely love your name, but I'm very grateful for the chance to be with you and to have this conversation. So thank you.

Anita Brick: I want to share a little bit about Anita before we jump in. She is globally trusted and respected as a strategic advisor, diplomat, special advisor to the Secretary General of the UN, WTO. She is founder and president of AM&A, an international consulting firm working closely with heads of government, private sector businesses, and international organizations to provide critical direction, insight, and inspiration into destination development, recovery, and competitiveness. Since 2020, Anita has been guiding leaders and educators in sustainable recovery of travel, tourism, and aviation in a post-COVID world. Her latest book, which we're going to talk about today and is a wonderful read, is The Call to Leadership: Unlocking the Leader Within at Times of Crisis.

And this is sort of amazing. Most people would never do this, but one-third of all the proceeds of the sales of the book will be donated directly to her foundation. It is a UK-registered charity which restores early childhood education in tourism based economies and communities around the world that are recovering from crises. When I think about people that I've interviewed, and I've interviewed a lot of people since we started doing this podcast quite a long time ago, there are very few who have your level of excellence, as well as your depth of humanity, and I think it comes across in the book really, really well.

So welcome, and thanks again for doing this.

Anita Mendiratta: Thank you. And thank you for your very deeply touching and humbling comments.

Anita Brick: So let's kick it off. And this was from a Booth MBA student. And she said the way you describe leadership, it is more of a calling than a position. I have never felt this way. Can you still be a great leader without it, or how do you find it? That's a big question, but it's an interesting one.

Anita Mendiratta: It's a great one. And admittedly, when I think about the principle of calling and I look at my own life, or if I think of yours or any other person, it's a tricky one because the word calling can almost seem theological and it can seem spiritual however one may define it. Often people question, what has it got to do with business?

What has that got to do with government? To me, I look at the word calling, Anita, as not if I have it but as what if I didn't? Because to me that's always a question of its motivation. Why am I doing something? And so whether it's a child deciding I want to be a doctor when I grow up, I want to be a pilot, I want to be an educator. It's not about a calling to be that; it’s I really want to be this—what if I don't do it? For me, a calling as a result is almost … it’s a magnet. It's an incredibly powerful magnet that makes anything else impossible to do. Because if we don't do it, we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.

If someone doesn't feel a sense of calling, that's absolutely fine, because it is something that needs to be unlocked rather than it's out there. To me, it's a sense of purpose, and it's almost a matter of if I were to ask that same student, what if you didn't do what you were doing? If you were to actually do something else, for some it would be, well, that's fine, I can do something else.

Others might feel if I didn't do this, something would always be missing. Something would always be incomplete. Something would always give me a sense of regret. That's when you know you've tapped into your calling: because there's no other choice but to follow.

Anita Brick: I love it, and I think at the time when you were doing interviews, it seemed like their even doing the interviews with you was part of their calling. If you don't do it, the window shuts, and it's gone. A lot of it is using our talent and also what we feel is important in our values and all of that.

Anita Brick: But there was an alum who asked a question. It was kind of related to this. And not directly to calling, but to hope. And he's absolutely right. Hope is a big theme of your book. How does a leader, especially one who is new in their career and new to the role, find hope when there doesn't seem to be any?

Anita Mendiratta: I'm just going to rewind a tiny bit, Anita, because you said something very important about the leaders in the book and their sense of calling and why the book, in a way, was a calling for them.

You've hit two critical, critical parts. And that being that the questions that I asked the people in the book were rather sneaky. I knew everyone that I interviewed personally because they knew I was going to hit their soft underbellies. And we had a relationship, so they knew I was going to ask tougher questions than the hundreds of interviews that they'd done during the time of the crisis.

Anita Mendiratta: Their willingness to say yes was a part of that. And what I found … there's one leader in particular. For instance, Paul Griffiths, who's the CEO of Dubai Airports, which is one of the largest airports in the world in terms of traffic and impact. He said it perfectly, and he said that I knew we were going to ask questions that weren't the typical news interview.

My point is this: he wanted to answer them. People have been asking him for two years, what's happening at Emirates Airline? What's happening with Dubai Airport, what's happening with your passengers? No one had stopped and said Paul, how are you? Why these leaders couldn't not step up. They couldn't do anything but fight when the crisis happened. They didn't know what their calling was. There was a time in the interviews where I could sense I'd almost become invisible. They were talking to themselves because for the first time, they actually realized that they had been responding to a calling that they didn't realize was out there.

For many of these leaders who were trying to heal through the shock and the exhaustion of leading for two and a half years, this helped the healing. Someone asked about and cared about how they were, and they were able to understand how they developed their own superpower strengths, to be able to do what they never asked for credit of.

Going to now the question you were asking about hope. I'm a firm believer that as much as Mother Nature might have had a horrible temper tantrum for three years, good has to come from this. I'm an idealist.

Anita Brick: Yeah. Me too.

Anita Mendiratta: There has to be good that comes from this. And the only way there will be is if we don't waste the time. If we don't learn something, if we don't grow from it, and if we don't come out better. And so I believe that the leaders find hope from the point of view of, this can't be happening randomly. I need to understand the reason. To me, that was a huge source of hope because otherwise there was just so much happening at the same time to give us nothing but fear and that eclipse the light in everyone. So these leaders somehow found a match and were able to light a little candle and keep moving forward and take others with them.

Anita Brick: And I agree with you. I am very much, how do you find meaning from a situation? But when you're in the midst of it, and these leaders that you profiled were really extraordinary, but what if you're a common mortal? They didn't feel like common morals to me. If you're a common mortal and things are changing rapidly and you are not being taken into consideration or things are flying by and it doesn't look good, how do you look for hope? How do you create hope, especially if you're not the person in charge?

Anita Mendiratta: I think it's a really powerful point. I want to go back to your language about common mortals. I think one of the things that really struck me, I know one of the things that really struck me and I found powerful in speaking to these leaders, is their ability to openly admit that they are common mortals, that they were profoundly alone as leaders because the title of leadership, which someone in a position of absolute aloneness. The assumption is you have the title, you have the business card, you've got the great car, you've got the great house, you've got all the trappings of leadership, and therefore you need no sympathy, you need no support, you need no love and care.

And these leaders, we're all human. We have never, in our lifetimes, has our generation experienced a crisis that was two years plus. So sustained but also invisible. Not as if it was a terror attack: A bomb went off, and then we go and we recover. Natural disaster, we recover. This was two years ago. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Continuous change and crisis with no consistent, no concrete data to go back on. We'd never lived through this before, right? Everyone in the world was suffering.

Anita Brick: That's a good point.

Anita Mendiratta: The hopelessness, the potential for it, was massive. What kept the hope going, I found, in these leaders there had to be something bigger they were fighting for them. Fighting for, I beg your pardon, than the fear they would easily have been able to run from. So, in Paul's case, being very clear that the royal family in Dubai, in the UAE, was counting on him to help them protect the people of their emirate.

Everyone had a reason that was bigger than the fear. And it was almost as if the fear of telling the family, the royal family, I can't do this was more painful than the fear of doing something and getting hurt in the process.

What is the source of hope? Clarity of why we are doing something. Because again, it goes back to the calling. If I don't do this, it's not just, am I afraid to face and look in the eye someone that was counting on me. More importantly, do I have the ability to look in the mirror and look myself in the eye and know that I failed? Hope is almost, it is as exactly as President Obama said. It's the audacity of hope.

It forces people to overcome what is right in front of them, because they fundamentally believe there's something bigger going on. There's something bigger I'm supposed to do, and if I don't, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

Anita Brick: I definitely get that. And someone who is running an organization, I can see where they either step up or they don't.

And in the book, you talk about people who, just for whatever reason, had to step away. But I'm wondering, when you start looking down an organization, how do you encourage people to find hope when they're not the CEO? For example, I have a friend who has worked at really fine hotels. She's a concierge. And you know this, but our audience might not.

There are not a lot of her in the world. The pandemic came, and she was out of work for 15 months. When you think about people who don't have the pressures that the CEOs do, but they also don't have the sources of hope, how do you see that people who are not CEOs were able to keep going and find that same, bigger meaning, even if they're not in charge?

Anita Mendiratta: I see that as a human chain, for lack of better words. One can't have an organization with 30 leaders running. There can only be one person leading. For effective leadership, it's about influence. It's about inspiration. And ultimately it's about impact. You can't do that on your own. So my belief is that anyone, at any level, has the ability to inspire other people to latch on to the next link in the chain so that the leader can pull everyone through.

It's the responsibility of the leader to not just look forward to where they are taking everyone, but to look behind them to make sure that everyone is tightly connected, to be able to be led to that safe place, whatever that safe place is. And so everyone has a responsibility, and I'm just using a visual expression. I have a right hand and a left hand.

If I'm in trouble, I have two hands to be able to pull two other people through. Everyone in the human chain has the ability to do that, because if suddenly a middle manager, a junior manager, a staffer decides, I can't support this, I don't want to be a part of it, you lose everyone down the chain. All the leaders that I watched when I was working with them, and they were in my travel and tourism ecosystem, knew this is the moment to step up and do something to help.

Not one of them said, this is my moment. As soon as you detect that ego, that's where people fall away. That's where they can't support a leader. But these were leaders that were humble. And that's where even when the book was launched, they were excited that their story was being told, but they were almost embarrassed that there were people going to hear their voices about how hard it was for them.

So I fundamentally believe that anyone in that human chain, in an organization, in a government, in a family, it's about looking around you to say, who can I lift up so that we can all lift up together? But it is the job of a leader at the front to be able to constantly look over one's shoulder to make sure that no one is letting go of the chain. And if they are, for what reason?

Anita Brick: I agree, and I think that that is a little ideal. And one of the questions that came from another MBA student who’s at a place where it doesn't seem like leadership is doing what your leaders in the book did:

“I'm in an organization that has been in an industry that was very stable for a long time, and now there are seismic changes.

“Recently we went through a massive reorg, and there was so much uncertainty because a number of people lost their jobs. Now everyone is afraid of making a mistake. Where can someone who is not at the senior levels effect positive change? Maybe even within my own team, when we know that leadership may not support that.”

Anita Mendiratta: This to me is such … it's a beautiful question and I'm really, really grateful to your MBA student for asking this.

I'm a firm believer in nature and humanity being the best strategy, especially when there's been dramatic change in an organization, which means that people are keeping their heads very low because there is no trust, there is no proof of delivery because the changes have happened. When you've got a reorganization and there's a term that's used of people that are affected versus unaffected.

Everyone is affected. Even if you keep your job, if you get promoted, people around you that you love and you've worked with have also suffered. So how can you not be affected? And that's where the guilt comes in as well. I'm a big believer in situations like that, when one is starting anew, if it is a chapter that's changed, it's up to everyone to have the freedom and the security, to be honest. And again, I put this on the shoulder of the leaders. It is up to them to not cheerlead as if everything's great because it's not great. It's not fair on people at any level to assume that they can just move forward and forget what's happened. You can't forget what happened.

And so I do believe that whether it's senior leaders, middle leaders, junior leaders, it's their responsibility to put themselves forward in front of their people and be honest in saying this is hard, how are we going to make it through together and allowing people that space to talk? It's very much like when I do work in conflict resolution. I look at the people in conflict like children having a temper tantrum. They're not going to listen; just hear them.

One of the greatest sources of loneliness is when people simply feel unheard. To the question itself, there's that much inertia and that much paralysis, because people are just scared of the changes that have taken place and don't trust what's ahead. They need to be able to say it, and leaders need to be able to listen because that's the only way you're going to start to get some glue between people who genuinely want to then shape what is the future going forward.

Anita Brick: And it's a really good point. And as the leader, as the senior leaders aren't doing that, the question is, how do I do this for my team, and taking responsibility in the area that person actually has responsibility. So your point is well taken. I think it's challenging for people to be that vulnerable. I also don't think there's a path out if you pretend that everything is OK.

Anita Mendiratta: And you make a really important point about vulnerability because unfortunately, vulnerabilities become almost a, within the human resources, human capital space, it’s a we need to be more vulnerable, right? I mean, I'm a natural crier. I'm a serial crier. It's about today, I'm going to be vulnerable. Vulnerability can be a forced condition. And this is where, you know, I fundamentally believe that: Just be real. This is one of the most powerful aspects of the crisis we all went through, was leaders admitting you cannot keep that emotional cruising altitude for that long. It's exhausting, especially when it's crisis after crisis after crisis. There was the pandemic. There's the economic crisis. There's the healthcare crisis, which is continuing. There's the long COVID crisis, there's a staffing crisis. All of these things are happening at the same time.

And importantly, crisis is not linear. It's layered. It's one thing after the other, after the other. People are suffocating. From all of the challenges, you need to be able to say, I'm not OK and feel safe in that. And the only people who can start that safety is a leader stopping to say, I'm not OK right now, but we're going to get through.

Anita Brick: And that leader can be at any level.

Anita Mendiratta: 100%.

Anita Brick: One of the questions that came through was, “I feel like I'm in need of a mentor who's managed a challenging situation in their career. How would you find one?”

Anita Mendiratta: I often find that I work in diplomacy. I get caught up in words. Mentor is an important word, but I've always found that what's even more valuable than a mentor is a champion.

Anita Brick: Yes.

Anita Mendiratta: And it can be completely outside of your industry, outside of your academic space, outside of your country. But someone who you can look at as an example of the kind of person you would want to be, not through the “what” of who they are, but the “how.” So here’s a small example. When I first started my own business, I made a decision.

I had a moment of epiphany, one would argue, when I was asked by a stakeholder at the World Bank when I was doing a consulting piece of work at a firm I was with, he asked me a very important question, and I knew instantly, in that moment, I needed to leave the firm, and I needed to go on my own because I knew that what I was doing was not enough.

And it was no disrespect to the firm, it just wasn't part of their scope of service. I reached out, Anita, to two leaders who happened to be stakeholders on this project. I went to them and I just said that I want to work with them—not for them, with them. One was in financial services, a CEO of a bank; one was the head of a property organization—an incredible woman, who was doyenne of the industry in the country.

It wasn't about what they were doing and their success as business people. That was a part of it. It was the how. They were both these gorgeous, elegant elders that no matter what their success was, they were gracious. They were grateful. They were elegant, they had gravitas. Every time I was with them, I could feel my back straighten and I could feel my voice soften.

And particularly one, Pam Golding, who to me is still part of the DNA of who I am. She always made me feel that no matter how successful and strong you are in business, never forget that you're a lady. And I've always held that in my heart. Now, 22 years later, since when I started the business, it was the example of something that I saw in someone.

You might have watched someone go through a crisis. It could have been a person of faith, person, a profession, the person in government. But there's something about the how of what they did that to me is the source of inspiration. And then you apply it to the context in which you live, work, operate.

But I've always been inspired by people's how. Because I don't care how successful someone is; if they forget their Ps and Qs, it doesn't matter. There's a decency that's required in people. And so I find that in looking for a mentor, looking for a champion, look at how someone has led. Look at how they have behaved in crisis. And that's the compass to start finding out who you really want to learn from and learn alongside.

Anita Brick: Really good point. Because it's not just that they got through the crisis. You're right. It's how they got through the crisis and who they are today, because people go through crises and end up worse. And then there are people who go through crises and they're better than ever, maybe different, but better than ever. Do you want the life, not literally where they live and all of that, but I mean, do you want the humanness and the sensibilities and the values that they operated in?

And I think that's a really good point. I don't think people think about it that way, Anita. They think about, well, they landed this title, they achieve these accolades. And that's why I want them to be my mentor, a champion advocate, whatever word you want to use. And I think you've added an incredibly important dimension: Do you match their humanity?

Anita Mendiratta: And that, to me, is the common denominator we all share.

You know, I think what's important about what you're saying as well, Anita, is that because there will be more crisis, whether it's a global crisis, regional or quite honestly, in our own homes. And this is what I found. That's, you know, a small example. I woke up this morning and got hit by a double crisis, which was severe. It's one of these, oh my goodness, it's Monday morning. But something horrible was happening halfway across the world with a group that I work with. And something was happening back in Canada, where I grew up, to a very dear friend that I've known since I was young and having lost their parent, interestingly to COVID.

And my immediate response when I saw this person's email—and he was writing in a complete state of devastation, he was just, I'm really sorry. I just needed you to know—I immediately reached out to people in our group, our friends group from literally 20 years ago, 30 years ago. This was back in university days, and I know they haven't had much contact, but it's, here's this person's email. Rally. Just rally. You know, I don't know when you spoke to them last; just rally. But my immediate response was, and I fundamentally believe this, anyone in crisis, whether it's a loss of a job, a loss of a dog, a loss of a partner, whatever it might be, no one in crisis should ever feel alone. No one. And even if it's just a rally, get everyone to just.

I need you to know this. This person that we know is struggling. Just rally because that gives them the strength to figure out what they need to do. It's the aloneness that can be so gutting and so cold that it distracts people from the ability to focus. And what I found is very important as well, and came out through, and I was trying to articulate in the book: we all have triggers. If you were to release the smell of hand sanitizer through the air conditioning system in a conference room, I'm confident 30% of the people in the room would start to twitch with fear. When mental wiring in our bodies or muscle memory absorbs memories, especially of trauma, before our brains can process them, to understand what our triggers are helps us the next time we confront that trigger. This is what's happened. OK, I understand why I don't like that scent, but I'm going to be OK. You can start to compartmentalize the trigger and the response. If one doesn't play and understand the triggers, they will always respond immediately, subconsciously. And that's why it's so powerful.

When I was speaking to these people in the book, they were very clear what their triggers were. Now it’s a little like I'm telling the butler did it to your listeners, but I reached out to these people because I knew their response during the crisis was not the first time they'd responded that way. Right. I do mean something in their life that had happened that had fused their wiring, which is why they immediately responded to that calling.

Many of them didn't know what those moments were until we talked about it. But that's why some people have recognized I am better in a crisis, because I know how I respond when a crisis hits. And it's profoundly empowering when you find ways of working past your own triggers, it's profoundly empowering. And that's what brings the confidence and the calm that gives other people confidence and calm to follow you through a crisis.

Anita Brick: Well, I agree, and people that I have spoken to in different roles in different fields, business and beyond that, one in particular took two global companies through a big crisis, with each one, to the point where his leadership is documented in Harvard business cases. And I asked him how he was able to do that. And it was very aligned with what you said.

When he was a much younger man, his first marriage kind of collapsed because of mental illness with his spouse and, you know, they worked it out and her son was ill and all the stuff. But he said, had I not had to manage that, keeping my daughters very close at hand because I needed to step up. I mean, he felt that calling, to be a parent who could bring them all out better. He said had that not happened when he was in his 30s, he would not have been able to lead these two organizations to a much better place than when he found them.

We all have ours. When I'm aware of it, I can address it. Now how do I want to move ahead through this and create positive value because of it? It's really important. But those triggers cause all kinds of behavior, not necessarily behavior that creates value.

Anita Mendiratta: And that goes back to the subject of hope that we spoke about. I'm a firm believer that one should never judge tragedy. It's not a matter of, well, I went through this where, you think that's difficult? I went through this. No, whatever this thing is, whether it's, again, loss of a job, loss of a partner, loss of a pet, whatever it is, it hurts. And to go through that and come through it, it leaves one with almost a sense of, well, if I can get through that, I can get through anything.

Anita Brick: Right.

Anita Mendiratta: And that was one of the real secrets of a lot of these leaders, from the point of view of I've gone through worse before. I can deal with this, OK. If I can deal with this, what is it going to be like on the other side? Because they believed there was another side to get to. And that's where it was really quite special because it was a matter of I do have faith that there's things I can control, there's things I can't, so stick with the things you can control. But I know I can do this because I've dealt with worse in the past. And so for some, their triggers became motivators. It pushed them. Similarly, I never worked harder in my life than during COVID, and it certainly wasn't what my core business was. When people talk about pivoting their business, you know, we use in hindsight, we run, right?

Anita Brick: Of course we do. Of course we did.

Anita Mendiratta: It's yanked in different directions. And now suddenly I've pivoted.

Anita Brick: But we make meaning of the things that we can't explain. We make meaning, and it depends on our mindset if we make meaning that puts us as the victim of it, or if we are the person who is triumphant.

Anita Mendiratta: Exactly. Because Mother Nature didn't do this by accident. Whatever is happening, there has to be a reason. The fuel of hope is the quest to find that reason.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right. Do you have time for a couple more questions? OK, there's an alum, and he found himself, like many of the leaders in your book, to be in a very challenging situation and far away from home.

And what he said is, “I am a leader in a challenging company and set of situations. On top of this, I'm working in one country and my family lives in another. I have been distracted, discouraged, and worried about my family. Any practical advice where to start to manage this is greatly appreciated, Anita.”

Anita Mendiratta: That's a beautiful question. And I have to say, and I'm smiling, that you've come to the right person.

Anita Brick: That's awesome.

Anita Mendiratta: I have had a long-distance relationship with my partner. He lives literally halfway across the world. Next month, February, we're celebrating our 20th anniversary, and the only way we … thankfully, we met through the industry, so there's an understanding of what we both do. But me being on the government and crisis side is very different than what he does, particularly during challenging times, whether it was for him or for me.

It's hard because you do feel profoundly taken apart from your comfort zone. So create comfort zones, create the rituals and the routines of connection. I love sleep counts. I'm a big believer in anticipation. It motivates me to be able to be one more sleep closer to when we get together. But create the routines of connection. Whether it's the times you call, sharing meals online, it would be his literally late morning and it'll be my evening, it's my dinner time, so he'd end up having lunch at the same time. I'd have dinner, he'd fall asleep, have a nap, when I was going to bed. We had that regular routine. There needs to be some normality in the abnormal, and my belief as well is that often you can have people living in the same home together that live past each other.

When you're apart, you can create those bonds that create prioritization, that that time is sacred. First, create the routines of connection. To me, that's really important. Use the time apart as a way of creating the sweetness of anticipation of the next time you're together, even if it's online. Create those reasons to be excited. The reasons to countdown. I'm a firm believer in totems.

I choose carefully. For instance, the rings I wear on my hand. They're always with me. I can always look at them, and that's my connection to him. These little tiny things I have in my handbag. I travel over 200 days a year, and I have this little tiny jade laughing Buddha that lives in my handbag, and he's done I don't know how many countries without a passport and a visa, but I can look at these. Those totems are important, those silly little things. Because when you're apart from the people you love, especially when things are hard, the inner child comes out much more than usual. And that inner child is alone and they're scared and they're highly emotional.

We have to comfort that inner child. Be kind to yourself. Be honest when it's hard being strong. I'm a firm believer in: we genuinely need to take care of ourselves if we have the ability to take care of others. I don't believe in martyrdom. I've never seen an old martyr. Martyrs die young. There's nothing, to me, honorable in that.

People trying to be proving that they're strong, they're tireless. We all get tired.

Anita Brick: We do!

Anita Mendiratta: There ways to work around it, and it just makes the hugs a lot tighter.

Anita Brick: That is great. What you're saying is profound, often never discussed. And it's essential. So we're going to get really practical and actionable for a moment. What are three things that a person can begin doing today to become the kind of leader who leaves positive impact wherever that person goes, and especially in a time of many challenges?

Anita Mendiratta: Hmm, very practical. First and foremost to me, it's something I referenced during our conversation. Have a conversation with yourself about your why. Why are you really doing something? It happens all the time when people are advancing their careers. They might take a promotion. Why? Because it has a bigger salary. That’s OK; just understand the why.

Why? Because it means I get to move out of a team. Just to have the conversation with oneself all the time. For what purpose? Why am I doing this? And it might be a reason that is short term. That's fine, but just be conscious. Be aware of owning your why because otherwise, if one starts to drift away from that, you can get caught into a slipstream of titles, of money, or whatever it might be. For me, having a conversation with oneself is profoundly important. It'll be a conversation you'll have today, a week from now, three months from now, always keep a conversation going about the why.

Second thing I find, admittedly, is always be grateful. Things are hard things, especially right now. Things are very hard in many ways on many levels. The crisis we all went through for a thousand days didn't blur the line, it erased the line between the personal and professional. It's nice to have perspective. So whatever's happening, whatever situation we're in, what can we be grateful for? What is one thing I can just say, for this I'm grateful. For this person, I am grateful.

I mean, even when writing the book, when someone asks, why did I write it? I had my reasons. I didn't want to waste the time that we had and waste Mother Nature's lessons. When suddenly the world opening up, when we were all running around madly, all of us running around madly? I wanted those 20 leaders, I wanted to say thank you to them because I don't think anyone stops. And importantly, I thought if people read this book and you need to turn to one person in your world who you think, wow, you are amazing, thank you.

Just say it. I think gratitude is incredibly important and it's incredibly energizing. And I think that the third thing I would say is, like I said earlier, find your champion, learn from those champions. It might be someone in a book. I love biographies and autobiographies. It might be just reading someone else's story. Start today looking at the lives of others and then understand their why and understand why we should be grateful for the way in which they have led.

Anita Brick: That's magnificent. And not just because I would have said the same thing, but because I think it's true. We know the why we have power. I think of gratitude as appreciation. I like that word better because it means two things. It means gratitude and it means growth. Because sometimes we have to grow to be grateful. And having champions, advocates around us, it helps them and it helps us.

So I love those three things, and you are pretty amazing human being. There's very few people like you, Anita, and I'm so glad to have had this conversation with you and have had the opportunity to read your book, The Call to Leadership. I know you're not going to stop being your magnificent self, but I know that you've made a difference in my life and the people who you come into contact with.

It's impossible for them not to be left better. So thank you for that.

Anita Mendiratta: Bless you and thank you for the time. Thank you for the interest and thank you for the gift of the conversation. I am genuinely grateful.

Anita Brick: Thanks, Anita, and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with Career Cast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.